


Too Dark To See

by thinkpink20



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:57:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkpink20/pseuds/thinkpink20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set when John lived with Stu at Gambier Terrace, a couple of years before Stu died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Dark To See

"Be easier if you were a girl," John says one night. The empty beer bottle is in his hands, dangling from oddly delicate fingers, threatening to slip at any moment. 

Stu sees from the harsh orange lamp outside that John is just talking into thin air, but of course knows that he means him. The curtain dances in the draft from around the windowpane; they're sitting in darkness because neither of them can be arsed to get up and turn the light on.

"Thought you thought I was; said it enough times."

This is so worthy a reply that John immediately lights up, grinning like a shark at him in the darkness. "There's truth in that, son," he says.

The mood - like the room - quickly deflates back to dullness. John is thinking - brooding, some would call it, but Stu knows better than that. Knows John isn't really cool enough to brood properly. 

The curtains shift again and Stu watches them move. It's like there's a hand tugging on them, causing a soft scrape of material every time they fall back and hit the glass of the pane, which is dirty and smeared - previous tenants, not them, but then that's not saying much, considering what sort of shape they keep the place in. 

The floorboard creaks over by the fireplace and Stu remembers learning all these noises, settling in to the place. The entire house had seemed to creak around him, before he got used to the restlessness of the brickwork and the timber, seeping into his consciousness slowly. Now he doesn't even bat an eyelid. It got to John at first too, he could tell; had caught him listening near the window one night, a mixture of challenge and hope on his features. Then of course John learned the noises too, so now they never mention them. 

Besides, there's always plenty of other, human noises to cover them up, rocking this house.

"You're small enough to be."

And Stu didn't realise John was still on this, so he looks over. He's giving him one of those penetrating stares, the way his eyes seem to _look_ at you and you instinctively fear the insult about to roll off his lips.

"Why would it be easier?"

John keeps looking, keeps staring in the same way and Stu feels himself falter, look away. He pretends to check how much beer he has left, makes it a pressing issue to get another. "You want a fresh bottle?" He shouts, going through to the kitchen. Gambier Terrace is shit small - tiny - yet he still can't remember where they put anything.

John doesn't answer so Stu takes two bottles through anyway, passes the light on his way but doesn't bother flicking the switch.

When John takes the bottle from him, their fingers brush and Stu notices he is ice cold.

"Got the cheekbones for it too," John says, when Stu is down, back on the sofa. They only have one, robbed from somewhere; Rod and John showed up in the garden with it one night, no questions asked, probably straight from someone's skip. They had murder trying to get it up the stairs.

"Thanks, I think."

Stu takes a mouthful from his fresh bottle, feels his lips fizz with the bubbles in the beer and listens. The old chair John is leaning back on is creaking, back two legs complaining under the strain. It's going to snap one day, that chair.

"Take the glasses off," John says suddenly, out of nowhere. There is a rattle in the closed up chimney-breast and Stu feels a slow danger creeping up his spine. He's unaware of quite what it is, though.

John seems perfectly serious, and the room is silent whilst it waits for him, so eventually Stu transfers his bottle to his left hand, reaches up to remove his frames.

The noise of the front two legs of John's chair falling back to the floor disturbs the silence, but nowhere near as much as John does as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, bottle held in his two hands between them as he peers through the gloom.

Stu lets himself be watched for a moment. John is too far away to see him really, and Stu leans forward on the sofa, extents his glasses in his hand. "They're helpful sometimes, I find. For seeing things."

John pulls a face that quite clearly says, 'I know that, you cunt,' then pulls the glasses on, dragging them down his nose a little bit, letting his eyes adjust to the new lenses. 

Stu watches the fingers on the neck of John's bottle run carefully down, catching on the label that is peeling and sweaty with condensation from the fridge. A drop of water rolls down from the neck, pools where John's fingers meet the glass.

"And the jawline, too," John suddenly announces, and Stu looks up, his hand flying to his jaw as though he's just been hit. 

"What d'you mean? There's nothing wrong with my jaw."

But John's fascination has wavered, he's leaning back on the chair again now, glasses still perched on his nose like some bastardisation of a professor or a learned man, contemplating his thoughts. "Not _wrong,_ just effeminate." He has pulled the cigarette from behind his ear, lit it and thrown the spent match away, down on the floor with the rest of their shared rubbish.

"Effeminate?" 

"Meaning fem-in-ine," John says loudly, looking down at him and punctuating every syllable as though explaining to a three year old. Condescending. With a lazy air of boredom about him.

"Oh... stuff off."

Stu gets up, feels his own limbs groan as though he's not long for this world and goes through to the kitchen, inexplicably offended. It's not the first time someone has called him a girl, certainly not the first time John has. But he moves about the sink in short bursts, sorting the clean and the dirty into small piles, trying to diffuse the anger.

"Great comeback, that one," John eventually says. His voice is much closer, and Stu turns to see he's standing in the doorway now, leaning artfully against the frame. The smoke from his final drag of the ciggie is blown upwards carefully, angling his lips so that it hits the ceiling. His fingers crush the butt out in the already overflowing ashtray on the table, grinding into the dirt.

"Why would it be easier, then?" Stu asks. He is drawn too tight to lean back against the sink, so stands in the middle of the linoleum. 

John's hair has fallen down from his Ted style, covering his forehead and making him more like a shadow. He doesn't answer again, just keeps looking, then eventually looks away, down at the floor like he's embarrassed. The beginnings of a headache start to seep into Stu's temples, though really it's always been there, like the hangover from a migraine, lingering and never quite going away.

"I said why would - "

"I heard what you said," John interrupts quickly, as though he can't bare the sound of Stu's voice. Perhaps he can't, Stu thinks. He is still looking down at the floor, scuffing his shoe over something miscellaneous and sticky, and Stu watches him, hoping in a distracted sort of way that the glasses John is still wearing don't slip off and break. He doesn't have money for another pair. "Just would be," he says eventually, breaking Stu's train of thought. 

Then when he looks back up, he shrugs. Stu feels his headache pulse. "I could be your Cynthia," he hears himself say, and is surprised by how much bitterness there is in his voice, how mocking it sounds.

"Shut up," John replies, and quick as a flash, Stu mimics him.

"Great comeback, that one."

John looks less angry than he should, less angry than Stu would expect. They stand there staring at each other as the floorboard in the other room creaks again, followed by the gentle tap of the curtains on the window. 

He decides he might as well plough on now, now that they've started. "It would be _too_ easy, then. You'd get bored."

"No I wouldn't."

The speed with which John replies makes it sound like a kid's game to Stuart's ears. He almost hears them ringing, "Yes you did!" and "Did not!" through the house.

"Well, I've got the face for it, according to you. Why not?"

The shrug of John's shoulders angers him in a way he can't describe, and Stu thinks if he had something in his hands, he'd throw it. Not at John, but at the wall maybe - at something solid. Something that wouldn't break if you hit it.

"Well?" He prompts again, and isn't ready for the fury and volume of John's reply.

"Because you're not a fucking bird, are you?"

Stu knows, though he doesn't feel it so much himself, why people are so frightened of John when he shouts. Even when he doesn't. There's an edge to him, an edge with something behind it. His threats aren't just threats, they're real. 

Stuart can't find him frightening though, not when he's standing there in a pair of ill-fitting glasses, his hair down over his forehead, wearing the jacket he worships because it was his uncle George's. What is there to find frightening about that?

"Stop thinking about it then," he says, fairly and calmly, despite the anger just leveled at him. Or the anger he feels himself. "Just give it up."

John laughs. One short burst, bitter and disbelieving. It sounds louder than it should in the quiet of the kitchen and somewhere, out of the window and across the city in the darkness, a siren wails. "Can't," John says.

And they stand there like that, like troops at ceasefire, until John steps forward. Stu watches him move, sees the second that he starts and gets an instant shiver of something, danger or excitement or relief. 

John steps up close, close enough for them to be sharing air, close enough for Stu to see that familiar face differently, eyelashes long. 'Fem-in-ine' he thinks, in his head.

"Can't, can I?" John repeats, but quietly this time, and Stu reaches up and takes his own glasses off John's face, chucking them on the sink unit behind him, no longer caring if they break. He can feel John's nose brushing against his own, lips so close he can almost taste the beer gone dry on them. And he shifts into John's body, so that he's reminded - not a girl.

There is half a second, just an inch of time, when Stu waits to be shoved in the chest. But then there is breath against his mouth, warm over his lips and he lifts his chin just a fraction, opens his mouth and John is kissing him. Not hard, not angry. Like he's melting. Like he's letting it come after years, water trickling from a crack in the dam.

The floorboard creaks ominously in the other room as wet mouths find each other in the low light of the kitchen. John's hands on his thin, straight hips feel powerful, different, new.

In their room there are two mattresses on the cold wood of the floor; that night they share one, ignoring the tap of the curtain on the window.


End file.
